Daily Archives: March 1, 2010

Allow me first to set the scene…Greta was asleep, Christine and I were sitting on the couch a good two-and-a-half hours into NBC’s coverage of the Closing Ceremonies of the Vancouver Olympic Games. We were tired, bleary-eyed from laughing, crying, and realizing that tomorrow morning we would have to emerge from our Olympic cocoon and face real life.

And then, just as Michael Buble (wow, is everyone Canadian?) and hundreds of hot, dancing Mountie chicks were wrapping up a rousing version of “O, Canada”, Bob Costas informed us that the network was now cutting away from their coverage — yes, you heard me, cutting away from their fake-live coverage! — to air a sneak preview episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s cheesy-ass new reality show, “The Marriage Ref”. What the hell? Say it ain’t so, Bob!

But, sadly, it was so…and like millions of American television viewers, we did not set our Tivo for NBC’s impromtu hour-long intermission, so, we missed the entire last hour of the Closing Ceremonies. Thanks, NBC!

What really pisses me off is that I checked the Tivo on Saturday night and there was no mention of a one-hour break in the Closing Ceremonies coverage at all. Which means that NBC, in their never-ending quest for total ineptitude decided to make the old switcheroo at the last minute and force feed their loyal Olympic viewers a meal of straight-up dog shit. Sorry, but that’s how it felt. After sixteen days of watching nothing but the networks of NBC, having them pull a stunt like that was like a freaking slap in the face…

And the worst thing was that our Tivo cut-off midway through “The Marriage Ref”…actually, that’s probably a good thing because that show looks super lame. But I’m sorry, NBC, you just don’t cut off something like the Closing Ceremonies at the Olympics to air a reality show. It’s disrespectful to your viewers, to Canada and hell, to the freaking Olympics in general. Seriously, I wanna write a letter to the IOC and get the games switched to another network next time…yikes…

On their website last night, the AP called NBC’s decision to cut off the Closing Ceremonies “spectacularly wrong-headed” and continued on to say that: “those enjoying the festivities were told to come back in an hour — at 11:30 p.m. on a night before work or school — for the conclusion. Incredible that NBC would wrap a show it has high hopes for, and one of its biggest stars, in ill will.”

As luck would have it, my brother Ryan was in Whistler this time last year and managed to score Greta a boxed set with all four of those plush beauties in it. And while those groovy Nagano Snowlet Owls were cool, and the Beijing Mascots kicked butt, I gotta hand it to Vancouver for including a freaking cute-ass Sasqautch in their bunch. Grrr…Yeti like!